Sky Q HDR rollout delayed until late 2020 – at least

It’s January 1 2020 and that means Sky has officially missed its deadline to roll out footage with high dynamic range capabilities at some point during 2019.

Now it appears the company could even miss 2020 too. A Sky employee posting on Sky’s official forums has said the update won’t arrive until late 2020 at the earliest. Forbes spied the post on a thread entitled ‘HDR Update 2019?!’ enquiring about when the enhanced imagery will actually be introduced.

Community Manager Kei+M posted: “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s unlikely that the UK will be seeing HDR until late next year at the earliest. We’ve pushed it back whilst we work on other priorities.”

What those other priorities are remain to be seen, but that’s unlikely to cut the mustard with Sky Q customers eager to enjoy their favourite movies and sports with the benefit of whiter whites and darker darks.

Beyond the comment from the community manager, who isn’t a spokesperson for Sky’s public relations team, there hasn’t been official confirmation of the delay. Until that time, Sky Sports and Cinema viewers are going to have to make do with 4K ultra high definition content.

Back in February 2018, Sky had officially announced the plans to add HDR to its capabilities at some point during 2019. The company had said that thousands of hours of UHD content would benefit from the roll-out.

For once it appears that Sky is falling behind rivals like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix from a technological standpoint, when it comes to HDR. Even the BBC offers some content in 4K HDR, so it’s surprising to see Sky drop the ball somewhat here.

Is the prolonged absence of HDR imagery preventing you from making the leap to Sky Q? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.

Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He's based in South Florida, USA.
…

Unlike other sites, we thoroughly review everything we recommend, using industry standard tests to evaluate products. We’ll always tell you what we find. We may get a commission if you buy via our price links.
Tell us what you think – email the Editor